SYNDICAT NATIONAL DE L'ENSEIGNEMENT SUPERIEUR 78, rue du Faubourg Saint-Denis 75010 - PARIS
Tél. : 0144799621 Fax : 0142462656 Courriel : sg@snesup.fr
SNESUP-FSU national press release in solidarity with Pinar Selek Falsely accused, Pinar Selek must be free.
Her name must be cleared.
Fifteen years of persecution by the Turkish State have forced feminist and human rights activist, Pinar Selek, into exile. She now works as a sociologist and researcher at the University of Strasbourg.
Following accusations of participation in an attack which turned out to be a mere accident, Pinar Selek was sent to prison and tortured. Although she was acquitted after three court proceedings, the criminal court in Istanbul has resumed its prosecution and now requests a life sentence against Pinar Selek whose only crime has consisted in the refusal to disclose to the police the identities of the Kurdish activists with whom she had been working as part of a research project. Next 24 January she may now be sentenced to lifelong imprisonment for daring to carry out free and independent research, for exposing the callousness of a State which, for long, has been given to the shameless harassment of individuals, minorities, and ethnic groups, along with the imprisonment of trade unionists, journalists, researchers, students, and artists, on political grounds.
The SNESUP- FSU branch of the University of Strasbourg, in a press release dated 11 January, proposes the creation of a campaign support group, the organization of a solidarity march on 24 January, and an official delegation to Istanbul, and calls for the whole University of Strasbourg academic community to join in these initiatives.
SNESUP-FSU will promote these initiatives and further demands that Pinar Selek be immediately cleared by the Turkish authorities. It calls for the academic and scientific community to support this demand and it call upon the President of the French republic, the French government, and the European parliament, to use all the means available to end all court proceedings against Pinar Selek.
